Ok, I guess this is a controversial one. I’d love to hear opinions on this; I’m not saying I’m right: first, every cat is different and second, I’m a newbie and don’t have any experiences.

Someone living in my household should be equal to me. This is true for humans as for pets. I try to see my home as a place, where everybody has rights and obligations to ensure that all are as happy as possible. This certainly applies to society as well, but hello, I’m not a teenager anymore: I can’t change the world at once, but I can start with my home. Now, I’m not stupid; cats are not humans and can’t have obligations. What I tried to say was that every member of my household, according to their own capacities and needs, sometimes benefits on the cost of others. And the other way around, but I guess you got that.

Due to my finances, I planned to only get one cat. I don’t know a lot about cats, but the little reading I’ve done suggests that most cats are not happy alone. However, there are cats who want to be the only cat. For a variety of reasons, some cats don’t like other cats. A win-win situation? That’s what I thought. I started to search for loners, but changed my mind. Not because there weren’t cats who would prefer to become the only cat.

I hope to fully recover from my depression at some point. I want to finish my studies and work fulltime. I don’t have a partner, I don’t have children, I live in the suburbs. With an average working day of 8 hours and commuting, I’ll be away for 10 hours. Another 8 hours of sleep, makes 18 hours of absence. That’s a lot. And I didn’t even take eating, showering, doing household chores or seeing friends into consideration. You can of course argue that some numbers aren’t that relevant: the cat may sleep in my bed (well, let’s hope it’s not nocturnal), the cat will gladly join and ‘help’ me with household chores, like Deb’s cat from Just Cats who seems to love doing the dishes … But the bottom line is that there are many hours when I’ll be away.

I reconsidered and was close to drop the idea of getting cats for another year or two. However, my friends and family didn’t give up. After some new calculations, I realized that I could afford two cats. I could even manage three cats, but I’m primarily searching for two. Silke from The 3 cats + 1 told me that it’s really difficult to find a new home for three cats. Maybe I could rescue three feline friends? Well, we’ll see how my journey of adopting cats will end.

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4 Comments

Being that I have 15, I am probably the wrong person to ask. I would definitely get 2, shelters have a lot of bonded pairs that way you know they already get along. Plus I hate to see kitty families split up so it would be nice to know soblings stayed together.

I’m also away for about 10 hours and I recently installed a kittycam because Jinpa had his first seizure. This way I can monitor him and watch the other ones. I can tell you that they sleep most of the time. When I come home and there’s action they are active as well. As long as there are at least 2 cats that go along well, I think they don’t get bored the time you are away. For sure they deserve their personal kittytime every day.
You can also do a lot to reduce stress or boredom with clicker training: https://katzentraining.wordpress.com/ (in German)
Did you already start to look at local rescue pages?
Best Regards, Silke

Wow, I learn something new every day – kitty cams! Thank you for the clicker training link, I’ll definetly have a closer look on it. Right now, there’re other things I need to fix and read, but this will be interesting as soon as I’m more settled with the basics. I’m searching for cats online on a daily basis, but haven’t been lucky so far. I guess it’s worth being patient, since the cats will be living for a long time with me. It’s not that easy though, especially since I started reading cat blogs… 😀

Thank you for sharing your experiences! I’m glad I reconsidered the idea of getting a single cat.

To be the mouse or the cat

One human, two cats and “Not-Me” living in the suburbs of Helsinki. Which one of us can only play when the other one’s away? I think the human is the cat and my cats are the mice. I’ll explain why as soon as I get this butt off my face.

I suffer from depression and anxiety disorder, and I also write about the impact of cats on mental health.

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